Rendang
Used to eat it as often as I could when I visited southeast asia
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I frequently watch videos of people from outside the US trying biscuits and gravy for the first time. Every one starts with “I’m not trying that disgusting slop” and ends with “I want to eat this every day for the rest of my life”
Random pic from the Internet for reference.

This was my experience with poutine before and after visiting Canada. No one truly gets it until they've had it. The real stuff. Not shredded mozzarella over fries.
White cheddar cheese curds/squeakers over fries with piping hot brown gravy poured directly over.
Now I live in Canada and eat it all the time.
I have not found a better hangover cure than biscuits and gravy.
Well, except moderation of course, but you know... the everything.
Pretty much all seafood. Shrimp in particular tastes fantastic but looks like something you’d try to flatten with a shoe.
Yum, ocean bugs
Mussels look like tiny brains. I like them, but very often I pass on the brains.
Usually that is only in their unprocessed state though. You don't put whole prawn and crab in a sandwich
Most curries look like vom slop and taste HEAVENLY
Feel the same way about hot dogs and hamburgers. Must depend on what you grow up with.
What are you puking up that it comes out looking like a fully formed hamburger or hot dog?
Obviously not in a pedantic sense, just that they also don't look appetizing on their own, it's the flavor that's associated with them that makes it work.
If we're being honest a hamburger looks like a smashed turd and a hot dog looks like fluorescent factory meat.
Now that I think about it a regional American dish that comes to mind is the garbage plate (named aptly for being a hodgepodge of leftovers) which looks like someone unloaded on a tray of french fries part way through their colonoscopy prep and then blew their nose on top of that:

Flavor is suprisingly solid.
Another would be oatmeal which can taste quite hearty if done right but looks very much like snot in a bowl:

I had the same type of programming, that just because you're grilling or pan frying some ground beef and egg, it's somehow unhealthy. It is if you fry it in lard, but it's just a beef sandwich. Don't eat a ton of fries, maybe even leave some, and it's really not very bad, calory-wise. Salt may be a different story.
Agree, hamburgers at least taste good even if at their worst they look like compressed excrement between buns. Hot dogs can often be flavourfully dubious while also appearing as artificial factory processed mystery meat, but there are definitely exceptions!
My guess is many users are American so it will be hard to relate to but at least we can acknowledge that the appearance of food is very culturally coded / subjective.
You can both be right
Absolutely! It's important to remember it's a pretty subjective / lighthearted topic and not to take it too seriously. I can definitely see how curries can be seen that way from a different perspective. There's an interesting history that plays into these cultural perceptions, which may explain why other meat in 'gravy' dishes may not come to mind first for some – such as meatloaf and gravy which can only be described aesthetically as a spurt of diarrhea on top of a sliced turd.
There seemed to be a need for a greater diversity of foods being pointed out here so thought we could broaden the horizons of this discourse, make it a little more inclusive and maybe even learn a little something about how a perspective is, at the end of the day, just an arbitrary amalgamation (kind of like the garbage plate I posted above) of subjective views. Tongue firmly in cheek, of course.
A good split pea soup, for sure.
Edit: and macarons look super pretty but taste..meh? Imo. Like if you were to imagine what Barbie food tasted like, it’d be a macaron.
I dunno who your macaron guy is but I've had some absolute bangers.
Dutch Pea Soup is the absolute best. My girlfriend calls it fart juice
Yep, I was gonna post this.
Split pea soup just actually looks like literal vomit or diarrhea, has a very, very weird texture to it visually...
... but if you do it right, it just tastes amazing.
To be clear, you mean the French sandwich cookies, not macaroons, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_ghanoush
Looks like slop, tastes like a party in your mouth.
Babar Ganesh!
So we can add hummus and... probably lots of other sauces / dips as well.
My candidate might be guacamole, which looks like it could almost be toxic ooze at first sight.
Honestly a lot of Mexican food looks kind of rough. Molé sauce looks like something you'd have to eat during a fraternity hazing. Birria, looks greasy and almost violently red. Nachos even, are not the most appealing food. But they're all amazing. So much flavor. The texture is exquisite despite appearances. Largely we've learned to maybe adapt our visual palates, I feel.
I honestly believe that the Mexican cooks invented the burrito because everything inside, especially mushed together, looks fucking gross. But if you wrap it in a tortilla so you don’t have to look at it, it tastes fucking awesome.
There's a Mexican place that opened very close to me, and I've been a bit bewildered by the general lack of flavor in their stuff. Examples would be their barbacoa, birria, pastor, chicken tinga, and carnitas. Funnily-enough, they load up the spices in their ground beef, so that's most usually my protein filling. 😕
I really don't know quite what to say in trying to suggest to a Oaxacan-style restaurant that their meats need more spices...
Because you don't speak Spanish?
Next up is Steven Babaganoosh!

I once threw away baba ghanoush that was intended for dinner because I thought it was discarded remains. I thought I was being helpful, but I was not.
Peanut brittle.

Some may disagree, but I always thought it looks like frozen vomit
That’s interesting - it looks quite different to the peanut brittle we get in the UK. That’s peanuts in a hard crack caramel which is a fairly dark brown and translucent. Does your have cream or peanut butter or something in the brittle?
(Attempting to paste in a typical image of the brittle I’m used to…)

Spam. When it comes out of the can, it looks like a disgusting gelatinous blob. But when you cut it thin and pan fry it, it's actually pretty tasty.Pretty much any canned meat. Ever seen a whole canned chicken? Although most canned meat doesn't taste nearly as good as fresh. But there really isn't a "fresh" spam. So I think it fits the question. https://c8.alamy.com/comp/CW0NEJ/luncheon-meat-on-plate-CW0NEJ.jpg
The first time my hawaiian friend fried the spam my mind was blown. No one I knew had ever cooked it, and we all thought it was nasty.
From Hawai'i here. I recently learned a new trick from a Filipino woman in regards to Spam: fry it until it screams. You put a thicker layer of oil in the pan and fry it until either the bottom side takes on a kind of yellow hue or you can hear a little whistle come out of it. This causes the fat to render and brings out the meat flavor in the Spam. Plus it gets crispier. Makes GREAT Spam musubi.
Spam, egg, and rice is a favorite of my kids (and me). Can get it at McDonald's here. Also good on pizza.
Spam is great. Straight up looks and smells like dog food before cooking though lol
Vienna Sausages are similar. I love those things, but you have to rinse the slime off before eating.
Fried spam with some cheap yellow mustard was a regular Sunday lunch. Usually with some boxed waffle mix topped with watery mapleine homemade "syrup".
I prefer spam to sausage on my breakfast sandwiches.
it's also amazing fried on white bread and mayo.
In Nice there’s a kind of swisschard gnocchi that’s called merda de can (dog’s shit) because of its appearance.
Judge by yourself (image taken from here).

The shape can be different depending on how you make them, but it always looks a bit suspicious.
Damn that has to be amazing
Invented in Nice, called dog shit in Italian.
"We'd never eat French dog shit!"
Poutine tastes a lot better than it looks

I'm sure poutine tastes great but this picture just looks like a bowl of human teeth to me.
I can see how it looks that way. The cheese curds don’t melt the way regular cheese would. If the cheese curds don’t squeak, it’s not done right!
I thought it was mixed nuts. Like peanuts and pecans.
Maybe you should see a dentist?
legit looks like a fat greasy turd, not sure I could physically go for it
I do t know where you got that, but change place. Doesn't look like kebab at all.
Dude, that's poop... from a butt.
Sausage gravy.
Probably one of the least visually appealing dishes that’s ever been put in front of me, but it quickly became a favorite!
My grandma stole the official Air Force recipe back in the 60’s and yeah it absolutely looks like dog puke. Love it though.
That's a good one. A local bar has Shit on a Shingle on the menu and it's tempting to get every time. But when a friend joins up who has never heard of it, they're like "What the fuck did you just order??". Then a few beers later they get the courage to try it and discover it's one of the best shitty drunk foods ever.
Hell yeah! Throw some scrapple in there and I’m game!
When you say "in there" do you mean on the same plate? I've only had it thin sliced and fried.


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